The Sleuth of St. James's Square by Melville Davisson Post (black authors fiction txt) 📕

one had been hurt. The passenger-coaches were not turned over, and the engineer and fireman had jumped as the cab toppled. By the greatest good fortune the train had gone off the track in this low flat land almost level with the grade. Several things joined to avoid a terrible disaster; the flat ground that enabled the whole train to plow along upright until it stopped, the track lying flush with the highway where the engine went off, and the fact that trains must slow up for this grade crossing. Had there been an embankment, or a big ditch, or the train under its usual headway the wreck would have been a horror, for every wheel, from the engine to the last coach, had left the rails.

We were an excited group around the train's crew, when the trackman came up with his torch. Everybody asked the same question as the man approached.

“What caused the accident?”

“Spread rails,” he said. “These big brutes,” he pointed to the mammoth engine sprawling like a child's top on its side, the gigantic wheels in the air, “and these new steel coaches, are awful heavy. There's an upgrade here. When they struck it, they just spread out the rails.”

And he pushed his closed hands out before him, slowly apart, in illustration.

The man knew Marion, for he spoke directly to her in reply to our concerted query. Then he added “If you step down the track, Miss Warfield, I'll show you exactly how it happened.”

We followed the big workman with his torch. Marion walked beside him, and I a few steps behind. The girl had been plunged, on the instant, headlong into the horror she feared, into the ruin that she had lain awake over—and yet she met it with no sign, except that grim stiffening of the figure that disaster brings to persons of courage. She gave no attention to her exquisite gown. It was torn to pieces that night; my own was a ruin. The crushing effect of this disaster swept out every trivial thing.

In a moment we saw how the accident happened, the workman lighting the sweep of track with his torch. Here were the plow marks on the wooden cross ties, where the wheels had run after they left the rails. One saw instantly that the thing happened precisely as the workman explained it. When the heavy engine struck the up-grade, the rails had spread, the wheels had gone down on the cross-ties, and the whole train was derailed.

I saw it with a sickening realization of the fact.

Marion took the workman's torch and went over the short piece of track on which the thing had happened. All the evidences of the accident were within a short distance. The track was not torn up when the thing began. There was only the displaced rail pushed away, and the plow marks of the wheels on the ties. The spread rails had merely switched the train off the track onto the level of the highway roadbed into the flat field.

Marion and the workman had gone a little way down the track. I was quite alone at the point of accident, when suddenly some one caught my hand.

I was so startled that I very nearly screamed. The thing happened so swiftly, with no word.

There behind me was a woman, an old foreign woman, a peasant from some land of southern Europe. She had my hand huddled up to her mouth.

And she began to speak, bending her aged body, and with every expression of respect.

“Ah, Contessa, he is not do it, my Umberto. He is run away in fear to hide in the Barrington quarry. It is accident. It is the doing of the good God. Ah, Contessa,” and her old lips dabbed against my hand. “I beg him to not go, but he is discharge; an' he make the threat like the great fool. Ah, Contessa, Contessa,” and she went over the words with absurd repetition, “believe it is by chance, believe it is the doing of the good God, I pray you.” And so she ran on in her quaint old-world words.

Instantly I remembered the man lying by the roadside, and the threats of discharged workmen.

I told her the thing was a clean accident, and tried to show her how it came about. She was effusive in gratitude for my belief. But she seemed concerned about Marion and the others. She did not go away; she went over and sat down beside the track.

Presently the others returned. They were so engrossed that they did not notice my adventure or the aged woman seated on the ground.

Marion was putting questions to the workman.

“There was no obstruction on the track?”

“No, Miss.”

“The engineer was watching?”

“Yes, Miss Warfield, he had to slow up and be careful about the crossing. There is no curve on this grade, he could see every foot of the way. The track was clear and in place, and he was watching it. There was nothing on it.—The rails simply spread under the weight of the engine.”

And he began to comment on the excessive size and weight of the huge modern passenger engine.

“The brute drove the rails apart,” he said, “that's all there is to it.”

“Was the track in repair?” said Marion.

“It was patrolled to-day, Miss, and it was all in shape.”

Then he repeated:

“The big engine just pushed the rails out.”

“But the road is built for this type of engine,” said Marion.

“Yes, Miss Warfield,” replied the man, “it's supposed to be, but every roadbed gets a spread rail sometimes.”

Then he added:

“It has to be mighty solid to hold these hundred ton engines on the rails at sixty miles an hour.”

“It does hold them,” said Marion.

“Yes, Miss Warfield, usually,” said the man.

“Then why should it fail here?”

The man's big grimy face wrinkled into a sort of smile.

“Now, Miss Warfield,” he said, “if we knew why an accident was likely to happen at one place more than another we wouldn't have any wrecks.”

“Precisely,” replied Marion, “but isn't it peculiar that the track should spread at the synclinal of this grade with the train running at a reduced speed, when it holds on the synclinal of other grades with the train running at full speed?”

The man's big face continued to smile.

“All accidents are peculiar, Miss Warfield; that's what makes them accidents.”

“But,” said Marion, “is not the aspect of these peculiarities indicatory of either a natural event or one designed by a human intelligence?”

The man fingered his torch.

“Mighty strange things happen, Miss